Okay, so background: I'm your average pro-gun fuck-the-police, fuck-trump zoomer honed by years of unsupervised internet access and I've just discovered this community and started lurking for a while. But I still hold extremely negative views on China, which I still think are justified.
"Which views?" I'll throw them out real quick: child labor! internet censorship! media censorship! anti-LGBTQ! uygher genocide? positive and pro war relations with russia! (because fuck putin)
So I get really confused anytime I see people expressing pro-China sentiments. Have I been spoonfed by the media or are some of these points actually justified?
child labor!
More of that in america mate, illegal in China.
internet/media censorship
You need to view this in the context of protecting the revolution. Let's say that you have a revolution in whatever country you're in tomorrow, are you just going to let the internet be a free space to foster and create fascist dissidents? Are you going to let foreign (capitalist) countries run your social media for you? Or are you going to limit various things in order to ensure that only domestic companies run your internet-media so that you can police them appropriately if they try to weaponise those forms of media as tools to overthrow proletarian rule and install bourgeoise rule?
I assume you've actually read some marx here, but if not, I want to just quote a small segment of chapter 2 of the communist manifesto at you.
The proletariat will use its political supremacy to wrest, by degree, all capital from the bourgeoisie, to centralise all instruments of production in the hands of the State, i.e., of the proletariat organised as the ruling class; and to increase the total productive forces as rapidly as possible.
Of course, in the beginning, this cannot be effected except by means of despotic inroads on the rights of property, and on the conditions of bourgeois production; by means of measures, therefore, which appear economically insufficient and untenable, but which, in the course of the movement, outstrip themselves, necessitate further inroads upon the old social order, and are unavoidable as a means of entirely revolutionising the mode of production.
These measures will, of course, be different in different countries.
Nevertheless, in most advanced countries, the following will be pretty generally applicable.
- Abolition of property in land and application of all rents of land to public purposes.
- A heavy progressive or graduated income tax.
- Abolition of all rights of inheritance.
- Confiscation of the property of all emigrants and rebels.
- Centralisation of credit in the hands of the state, by means of a national bank with State capital and an exclusive monopoly.
- Centralisation of the means of communication and transport in the hands of the State.
- Extension of factories and instruments of production owned by the State; the bringing into cultivation of waste-lands, and the improvement of the soil generally in accordance with a common plan.
- Equal liability of all to work. Establishment of industrial armies, especially for agriculture.
- Combination of agriculture with manufacturing industries; gradual abolition of all the distinction between town and country by a more equable distribution of the populace over the country.
- Free education for all children in public schools. Abolition of children’s factory labour in its present form. Combination of education with industrial production, &c, &c.
Pay special attention to what I've bolded here, the paragraph and bullet point 6. The point being that centralisation and control of all media is completely in-keeping with Marx's (and the other writers) views on the matter. Media is a tool of the bourgeoisie that costs a significant amount of money, it functions as a means of power exerted through wealth to control and influence outcomes in a state. Removing these from the bourgeoisie and centralising them in the hands of proletarian control is part of overthrowing the bourgeoisie.
The reason the bourgeoisie have propagandised you into disliking this is BECAUSE it massively harms and affects them. They wouldn't give a shit about it if it harmed the proles, they only give a shit because it affects them.
anti-LGBTQ
China practices a bottom-up system of power. Starting at the mass line via committees and polling. This does result in slower progress on social change than a top-down approach. With that said however, lgbt issues are progressing as younger generations age up, and this more or less guarantees progress as long as the system does not change as the overall population will exert its power over time. Boomers are the thing holding it back. It is also I think fair to point out that lgbt issues are not going great in the west, with a large push for reversal well underway.
uygher genocide
Literally didn't happen. An oppressive crackdown and re-education program? Yes sure. Genocide? No. A simple thought experiment that you should do here is to ask yourself how Israel, a country that is much much smaller with more resources to spend per population doesn't manage to stop evidence of its crimes from occurring(see /r/israelexposed), yet what have you actually seen of China's so-called genocide? Nothing. No refugees. No video evidence (in a country where people all have cameras). Fuck all.
What did happen was that China cracked down on islamic extremism that was being fostered through cia connections across the border with afghanistan, which the US was occupying at the time. China combatted this by undertaking an absolutely massive re-education program to raise the quality of living, jobs and prospects of susceptible people in the region. It turns out that people with good jobs don't want to do suicide bombings.
This is obviously a topic that needs more than 2 paragraphs to dispel. Feel free to question and dig deeper. There are certainly images you'll have seen without hearing the evidence against them, and there will be stories you've seen peddled from a false pov. I'm happy to go into them, I also recommend this report: https://www.qiaocollective.com/education/xinjiang
positive and pro war relations with russia! (because fuck putin)
Geopolitically speaking it is essential for China to ensure Russia doesn't collapse or fall into the Western sphere. If it did then the result would be 50 nato bases planted on the border and China would be utterly surrounded, isolated, and any future of it as an influential power seriously hampered. It would be fucked quite frankly.
Not sure where you got the idea that they're pro-war. They are brokering for peace. Have been the entire time.
EDIT:
OH wait I can't believe I forgot to quote Lenin on freedom of the press
“All over the world, wherever there are capitalists, freedom of the press means freedom to buy up newspapers, to buy writers, to bribe, buy and fake "public opinion" for the benefit of the bourgeoisie.” -- V I Lenin, 1921
Freedom of media just means freedom of the bourgeoisie to buy and own all means of influence in society. None of them will be proletarian unless strictly controlled to be so, all of them will be owned by some fucking billionaire or fund that answers to many millionaires.
anti-LGBTQ
also much like the us, china has a lot of regional difference on lgbt rights. the shanghai branch of the party for instance has been much more vocal in pushing for progress than a western viewer would every be aware of.
Yup, rural China maybe still have some conservative view, but in urban area, there are a lot of progress. Can't just blanket anti-lgbt entire country just because one or two province, or you have to call out the US too, they also pretty damn anti lgbt.
Adding to the point about censorship:
The reason the topic of "censorship" is seen as such a taboo in Western countries is because of the belief in the "free marketplace of ideas", a fundamental pillar of liberal democracy and liberalism in general. The idea that, if you just let everyone give their opinions and arguments, the free marketplace of ideas will ensure that only the best ideas prevail and society will improve as a result. From the liberal's point of view, bad ideas would be filtered out anyway so censorship is unnecessary and only serves to suppress free thought.
Of course, this is nonsense. The "free marketplace of ideas" only exists in a fantasy world where everyone is arguing in good faith and is expressing their differing ideas with the genuine intent of making life better for everyone. Right-wing rhetoric, however, consists exclusively of bad faith arguments and outright lies. They have no intentions of improving society, they want to enforce their imaginary hierarchies where they are at the top and you do as they say. Their ideas are worthless and harmful through and through, but they appeal to the selfish, fearful parts in many of us that kinda like the idea of naturally being more "deserving", simply "better" than others.
It's like if I offered you heroin and a nutrient bar and told you "You get to choose your future diet, but you have to try both to give each a fair chance." One is clearly better, but many would still choose the other after being exposed to it.
Right-wing ideas are harmful and worthless. They are not presented in good faith and should, in fact, be censored.
the maoist uprising against the landlords was the largest and most comprehensive proletarian revolution in history, and led to almost totally-equal redistribution of land among the peasantry
this single sentence is my favourite post ever on this website and i upvote it every time it is posted
I have asked where it’s from about a million times and no one can ever tell me lol
The first time I saw it, it was on a Wikipedia-style caption on a black and white photo
Okay, so I managed to not only forget my password but neglect to properly save it on my password manager so unless there's a way to reset your password without an email by commencing in some sort of secret orgy with the mods, my main account is effectively fucked.
On a better note, I've read everybody's comments and have come to the conclusion that while China isn't perfect, it's sure as fuck doing better than America. (obligatory fuck America, should've added that in the original post)
Thanks for not treating me like a troll and instead as someone who was genuinely curious. Definitely gonna be frequenting this site more often. Also, Chris Dorner did nothing wrong
Congrats on coming around faster than I did, it's honestly pretty embarrassing thinking how much of the western propaganda I used to buy into just a few years ago
Like I knew the media was lying about Cuba and Venezuela and Palestine and even Iran but I believed a lot of the bullshit about China and the DPRK
The sort of trolls this site attracts aren't smart or subtle enough for an act like this, ranting about being force feminized by the pumpkin spice is more their speed
The LIBERALS turned me GAY with their THEY/THEM femboys and their MASSIVE COCKS
Okay, so I managed to not only forget my password but neglect to properly save it on my password manager so unless there’s a way to reset your password without an email by commencing in some sort of secret orgy with the mods, my main account is effectively fucked.
that is just the natural life cycle of an account here people switch them up
I'm glad it's made sense, I'd suspect all of us are hoping for the best from China.
Domestically, we should be prepared for any opportunity to change things, maybe the gears come to a sudden halt and we can seize on that.
But it's more like than not that the US simply becomes more overtly fascist than the latent fascism inherent to it today. If there's any hope for the world at that point, there has to exist a force capable of stopping the US. And in the aftermath, powerful enough to make sure that it isn't given a real seat at the table.
I actually had an account on here but deleted it because I didn't want to link my main online persona with Hexbear. I thought this username was kinda funny
I don't anyone thinking this is a bit. I'm dead serious and actually want to get some explanation.
I always thought Zelensky was a good guy (again apologize for my media spoonfeeding) and I have never heard anyone make that point about NATO, but at the same time when you think of NATO as a group of the world's biggest governments jerking eachother off, it does start to turn some gears in my head
If you have taken western media's word for literally anything regarding China, then yes, you have absolutely, 100% been spoonfed imperialist lies. Western media is inherently tied to furthering western imperialist interests. It doesn't mean literally every single thing they say is a blatant lie, but it does mean that they will twist anything and everything they can in order to convince as many people as possible that "we are the good guys, they are the bad guys!" Even truths are so obscured and misrepresented that they may as well be falsehoods.
If you want to hone your sense of whether or not the media is lying to you, grab yourself a copy of Blackshirts and Reds by Michael Parenti (or just read it here ), a book which you may have seen spoken about in your time on Hexbear. It's a relatively short book which will give you plenty of straightforward examples of the way that western media twists facts to serve their interests.
Or you can get the turbo short version and just read the infamous Parenti quote:
“During the cold war, the anticommunist ideological framework could transform any data about existing communist societies into hostile evidence. If the Soviets refused to negotiate a point, they were intransigent and belligerent; if they appeared willing to make concessions, this was but a skillful ploy to put us off our guard. By opposing arms limitations, they would have demonstrated their aggressive intent; but when in fact they supported most armament treaties, it was because they were mendacious and manipulative. If the churches in the USSR were empty, this demonstrated that religion was suppressed; but if the churches were full, this meant the people were rejecting the regime’s atheistic ideology. If the workers went on strike (as happened on infrequent occasions), this was evidence of their alienation from the collectivist system; if they didn’t go on strike, this was because they were intimidated and lacked freedom. A scarcity of consumer goods demonstrated the failure of the economic system; an improvement in consumer supplies meant only that the leaders were attempting to placate a restive population and so maintain a firmer hold over them. If communists in the United States played an important role struggling for the rights of workers, the poor, African-Americans, women, and others, this was only their guileful way of gathering support among disfranchised groups and gaining power for themselves. How one gained power by fighting for the rights of powerless groups was never explained. What we are dealing with is a nonfalsifiable orthodoxy, so assiduously marketed by the ruling interests that it affected people across the entire political spectrum.”
edit just to say: if you've bought the media line on China, you've been misled a hundred times more egregiously about North Korea
New site tagline right here:
when you think of NATO as a group of the world’s biggest governments jerking eachother off, it does start to turn some gears in my head
- AverageBernieZoomer
To understand Zelensky you have to understand imperialism. Imperialism in the age of capitalism is a process that happens naturally over time, as monopolies tend to form (big fish eat small fish) and new markets need to be found to keep the GDP growing.
The biggest imperial power in the 21st century is without a doubt the USA. It makes sense as they are the most advanced capitalist nation (I mean not technologically, but overall in their processes of doing capitalism). After WW2, they were left untouched and Europe needed rebuilding. With the Marshall Plan, the US lended money to European states with which they could only buy US-made goods. They also established the petrodollar: any transaction done to purchase oil has to be done in USD. This makes the currency strong and, moreover, needed all over the world (States need to keep a supply of USD).
Later they also established the IMF and the World Bank. These two international financial bodies essentially just exist to keep "developing" countries (ex-colonies) subservient, as a source of cheap goods and labour.
If the US decided to suddenly be nice and stop fucking up the world, billionaires would lose their money. Capitalism would enter a recession that would turn global (because the US has their hands in everything). It's never gonna happen willingly. What I'm saying is there's very rational and logical explanations behind why the imperial core and the USA want to keep this system going. It's not in the best interest of 75% of the world's population, and China in fact has shown that an alternative model exists -- at least for the time being -- but this is the world we've inherited post-WW2... and shit, even before WW2 colonialism was setting up the stage for this imperial hegemon to exist.
Speaking of finding new markets and bringing the developing world under the governance of the imperial core... isn't that Russia today? A country where, after the US spent literally decades trying to destroy (for being a threat to their imperial privilege), life expectancy plummeted, homelessness reached literally unprecedented heights (since there was no homelessness in the USSR).
Doesn't this look like a good target to bring under your governance? The imperialists thought so too, and that's what they've hoping to accomplish ever since the USSR was established. When Putin was running for President actually (after they realised Yeltsin wasn't going anywhere, despite funding his campaign in 1991), Blair met with him a few times. They were hoping to make him into a comprador: he controls his country but he makes very, very nice packages to US and UK capitalists, like mineral concessions or natural resource exploitation. The imperial capitalists win, the Russian bourgeoisie kinda wins (not as much as if they were fully independent but who cares, they still make money), and the Russian proletariat? Who gives a fuck about them. What matters is getting that fucking dough back home to the US so we can line our pockets with it.
Except of course that didn't happen as we know.
That's where this ties in to Zelensky. Zelensky is a fucking clown, and I doubt Washington takes him seriously. But where he's interesting is that both the US and EU knew that there was a possibility to provoke Russia into attacking Ukraine. Shit even Merkel said that the Minsk I and II agreements were only made to buy time for Ukraine to build up an army.
And so what the imperial core couldn't achieve 30 years ago, they hoped to achieve by bringing Russia in a war that a- would exhaust them and b- would give justification for further exhaustion. Like the many (silly) sanctions as soon as the war began, as if the US had a whole PDF prepared on it. Like "Day 7: ban Russian cats from participating in cat shows" type of silliness.
That's the real reason you get so many feel-good stories about Zelensky. That's the reason he comes across as a guy that can do no wrong and is just the purest person ever alive. The Iraq War really showed that the media was just a mouthpiece for the government (the NYT famously heavily supported the war), and further leaked documents showed later that sometimes, the CIA or State Dept. would just write articles for freelance journalists, and tell them to sell the article to publications like the Guardian, the HuffPost, etc. under their own name.
Meanwhile Zelensky was elected after a fascist coup in 2014 (the Euromaidan thing) that was also engineered by the CIA. He continued the shelling of the Donbas ethnic Russians (another thing the imperial media doesn't want you to know, because nothing short of outright suicide for Zelensky is acceptable (hey, as long as we're morally bankrupt and glorifying a stooge that used to play piano with his dick on stage, let's go all out!).
And what did the war achieve for us, by the way? It's great. Incredible, even. War is the best thing that can happen if you're a capitalist. Now we're used to worse living conditions (gas and electricity costs, general inflation for basic items like food), wages are not going up with inflation, and this is gonna be our future for the next few years at least.
But keep supporting Zelensky or Putin wins. Stop asking for a better life and just accept whatever we give you, because it's primordial that we keep spending money on this war. It's primordial that more Ukrainians and more Russians die. We won't stop until we've acquired every last coin from your cold, dead hands. Because it's never enough.
And if your life is crap because of our policies? That's not our problem.
But don't worry about your life. What are you, some kind of egoist? You should be very concerned about what's happening in China right now instead. They have it worse than you, trust me. This is really bad. We need to liberate China and start World War 3. It's gonna be great for them, while I fuck off to the Bahamas with my savings and international investment portfolio that exists as nothing more than an Excel spreadsheet.
I've never heard anyone make that point about NATO. Could you elaborate?
That was a lot to take in. That's crazy how every bad Western government decision loops back to communism or racism
:marx-goth: i fuckin warned you bro, i told you dog :i-told-you-dog:
NATO wasn’t overly anti communist until the USSR sent an application knowing they’ll be denied.
Also, Russia after 1991 wanted to join NATO and even did a few exercises with them. But the US didn’t trust them and so made it an eternal enemy.
While even your explanation of the Great Firewall does seem slightly dystopianish, that's actually a pretty good reason for why they would do that. I always likened it to North Korea's internet system with the exception of the VPNs.
Also, do you have sources for the history courses? I wholeheartedly believe the Winnie thing is fake now but my brain still wants me to believe in censorship
Facebook has actively assisted in genocide and the banning of it is a net good for society https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2022/09/myanmar-facebooks-systems-promoted-violence-against-rohingya-meta-owes-reparations-new-report/
I'd argue the open internet as we have it has become a sort of dystopia. When it was still new, companies and tech enthusiasts proclaimed that it would unsure in a new era of human understanding and free information -- a pretty utopian promise. What we actually got is a tool for building private databases of advertising profiles and the mass proliferation of Q-anon style nonsense. I'm kinda envious of China's model. If you can clear the most basic barrier of tech literacy, congrats, you get to visit the open web! Otherwise, it's a walled garden where yer gran isn't gonna get silly ideas about Sharia law or vaccine 'poisons'.
I assume you're from the States. I'm European and tbh we (I) don't want US companies like Facebook to be handling our social media. They dictate whatever they feel like, which might speak to people in the US but not to people in Europe, and then they threaten to pull out when they get the slightest slap on the wrist from the EU or other governments (they never actually end up pulling out though).
An example I can think of right now is when Facebook allows you to raise money for exclusively US charities. What do I care about some children's hospital in Virginia when we have our own children's hospitals here?
It feels like they're dictating to us how to think, and it comes across as more cultural imperialism. It's not enough that we consume their media, we also have to consume their products and live their lives.
Internet sovereignty is an increasingly important thing, every region in the world needs their own tech and web solutions.
Great Firewall
with the relentless complaining about Russia and China cyberattacks you'd think America would beg for a "firewall"
I always ask “How’s that free and open internet thing going for the west?” Because it seems to be doing a great job at helping delegitimize and destabilize liberal democracies.
Having to install a VPN to access an uncensored internet seems like a good idea tbh. Just a small skill check to make sure you’re at least capable of that before letting you have access to InfoWars
over a billion people are no longer living in poverty bc of the PRC. the world bank even admits they have accomplished most of that in the past 40 years alone. they have done great work in essentially ending homelessness and their home ownership rate is 90% . western sources admit it bc a lot of westerners can go to China and witness the living conditions. and they account for a third of the world's manufacturing output.
learn about the PRC, be aware of the source your information is coming from, and inspect citations when the author makes claims. it becomes much easier to see through propaganda movements western sources push like the sensationalization of anti-LGBT sentiment in China. or the published lies about the events in Xinjiang.
My favorite trick is they’ll act like the Chinese government is censoring movies when what’s actually happened is that they’ve identified a single party member who works at a private company and that company has censored a movie, not for the sake of pleasing a bureaucratic agency, but because their niche in the market is catering to conservative moviegoers. It’s like acting like 90% of the US population watches PureFlix
also the Chinese communist party is massive it includes anyone who is anyone in China
Nobody gets any civil rights if the CIA coups you and installs a fascist. Which is what happens if you go against western interests and aren't willing to take necessary countermeasures. Mohammad Mossadegh of Iran is my favorite example (though there are so, so many to choose from) of a left-ish leader who went against western interests, but he was a true believer in democracy and free speech and all that jazz. The CIA infiltrated every newspaper in the country, they hired people to protest against the government and they hired people to march for the government but wreck shit, they bribed people in every sector of society, from politicians to religious leaders to vote counters and so on. When the country got blockaded by the UK, he didn't align with that naughty Soviet Union but kept trying to get into the good graces of the bastion of freedom and democracy, the United States. The US, which had remained neutral in their struggle against the horribly oppressive colonial rule of :ukkk:, sold them down the river in exchange for UK support for NATO and the Korean War.
Why? Because the UK had more power, and righteousness and moral authority are meaningless compared to that. And nobody attains geopolitical power without fucking somebody over. That's how the world works. Mossadegh didn't accept that, he wasn't willing to be the bad guy. And what happened? He got replaced by a fascist, who brutally suppressed Iran's left until he got overthrown by the current government. How long until Iran gets another chance at a leftist government? Will they ever? These are the stakes of failure, never forget that.
Now personally, I don't like that state of affairs. I'd like it if there was a true international community, where if there was someone like Mossadegh who was unambiguously in the right, but crossed the interests of a powerful country, they'd still have potential friends to turn to. That is to say, a multipolar world, where countries have options and can choose their own destinies. China has flaws, yes, they're not above criticism. But you have to be willing to look past some degree of ruthlessness if you actually want someone to be able to challenge power and change the present state of things. Tbh, I wouldn't want to live in China, and not just because I'm queer. But China is paving the way (especially with BRI) for other countries to develop and survive, without dictating their domestic policy the way the World Bank/IMF do. Much of the world is still very much under the boot of colonialism, resources like mines and oil fields that were seized through force were never returned to the people they were seized from, even while they live in abject poverty while the owners are multi-national corporations run by some of the richest people on the planet.
You don't like China's style of government? That's fine. Do you like any style of government outside of neocolonialism? Then you should support China's government. Because it is through China that other options are becoming possible. If you don't believe me, then you need to learn more about the history of US backed regime change.
Tl;dr:
"Say whatever you want about me, I'm the bitch that lived"
:xi-lib-tears: :speech-l:
(Also a lot of stuff about China is made up or exaggerated. There are valid criticisms, but Western media has a track record of running all kinds of tabloid-tier stories.)
I'll bite:
CHILD LABOR: Yeah, it's bad, but China is working to reduce and abolish it. Like most Western nations it is illegal for children under 16 to work in normal jobs. However, they have exceptions for "special circumstances". This mostly leads to children in rural areas of China being employed on farms and such, not much unlike here in the US. It is important to remember China's meteoric rise from a nation racked by poverty and war in the 40s to the powerhouse it is today. That's not even 100 years. Took most everyone else a lot longer to get with the program.
CENSORSHIP: We all experience censorship all over the world. Here in the US certain views are censored from our media (our corporate media is part of the state). YouTube censors swear words. I can got on. China, like most Asian nations, cracks down hard on libel and slander. So defaming someone or spreading bullshit is censored and punished, unlike America. China is not alone in this. For instance, in Japan, you cannot even tell the truth about someone publicly if it would defame them. Like telling people your partner cheated on you. It has to be "in the public interest". The "censorship" in China reflects this value that is shared across many Asian cultures in that region and is nothing particularly special or heinous. Most people in that region are fine with these laws because they have different views on freedom than most Westerners.
ANTI-LGBTQ: This is not particularly special to China, sadly. The US has it's own issues here. The Arab world is a disgrace in regards to this. African nations struggle with this issue. South American nations struggle with this. Many Asian cultures struggle here as well. It is an awful truth that much of the world has a poor view on LGBTQ+ peoples and their rights and the struggle to protect the dignity of our LGBTQ+ comrades everywhere is ongoing. China is not exceptional in one way or the other here.
UYGHER GENOCIDE: Putting people in re-education camps is not good. As someone who has actually worked in corrections in the USA I can attest that in every correctional facility there are abuses that the average person would recoil from. It's why I did it for a short time and quit. It's why I'm an abolitionist. I am highly skeptical of the claims made about "organ harvesting" and nightly r*** because even in the most dire conditions these are particularly heinous. Remember that the guards in China are people, too, just as capable of good and evil as we are. It is also worth noting that the most vocal critics are all members of a weird cult in China and are generally only ever amplified by US propaganda outlets, for which the US media (our corporate state media) re-prints. So there is plenty of reason to be skeptical. It is also worth noting that for decades the US spent tens of millions trying to radicalize the Uyghurs into terrorists in China. So seeing our government officials here suddenly cry over their treatment while they previously wanted to turn them into suicide bombers really makes my blood boil. It is so disingenuous.
RUSSIA: Russia is a capitalist hell-hole now and the fall of the Soviet Union was one of the many tragedies of the last century. China does not have the "red scare" that the West has in regards to Russia. If you step back and look at things objectively, Russia is really no worse than many other nations, like the USA. Sure, they invaded a white nation. If only they were murdering brown people then our media wouldn't care. But I digress, Russia is bad. Ukraine also sucks. Ukrainian people don't deserve war. Well, nobody deserves it. China needs partners around the world that aren't antagonistic to them and Russia is one such partner. In fact, Chinese businesses are already filling the gaps in the Russian economy since they don't give a fuck about Western sanctions. China is looking at this from that perspective. Should they also let the average Russian suffer? Would that satisfy you?
a more direct example is kashmir. yeah china could have gone the american route and bombed half of the muslim world. or it could have gone india's route and actually suck at dealing with the territories most vulnerable to extremism.
If your measure for if they worked is “did it reduce terrorist attacks” it was quite effective. But also the re-education centers were only part of the program, so who can say what was responsible.
I was not expecting such a well thought out response. As much as I would like nations to immediately become good and progressive, you brought up the point that there are many nations around the world that struggle with a lot of these things and I forgot to think about that. Thanks for your entire comment - I'll probably be re-reading it a lot.
I want to touch on the child labor point, though: as is evident in day-to-day life in America, laws can exist without not really being enforced to the point they become virtue signaling. My point is is there any evidence that the Chinese government on their end has worked to enforce their laws?
Before I answer this I want to point out an interesting contradiction your concern raises. You propose that the Chinese government is lax in enforcement. Well, is the Chinese government an authoritarian monster who punishes citizens over the tiniest infraction or are they lax in enforcement of some of the most obvious violations of the law? When discussing China with people I notice things like this. "China bad" wins over common sense. Propaganda works, folks.
Yes, China has actually been working to reduce child labor. The thing with China is they are actually concerned about their image to the rest of the world. Child labor is a blot on them. They still have about twice as many children in the workforce as the USA or UK, but the days where they worked them like they still do in Bangladesh are over and the situation improves year by year. This is not to mean we shouldn't be critical. We should be critical of China, the USA, the UK, and everywhere were children are abused and exploited.
Holy fuck you're right lmao I didn't even realize I was contradicting myself
None of us are immune to the propaganda we internalize our whole lives. Not me nor you.
welcome to dialectics, we're glad you're here :marx-guns-blazing:
One last thing I'd like to say in regards to "freedom" that has little to do with China:
Freedom is an interesting concept. There is an idea in the West that freedom is universal. That it's definition is so obvious and essential to us as human beings that we must all surely think that it means the same thing to everyone. In America we even wrote down that our rights are divinely imbued to us. However, it doesn't take much reflection on the idea to realize that this simply isn't true. Take our free speech example early. The Japanese have plenty of people who defend the laws. For them there is an oppression in the idea that anyone can just go spreading lies and rumors about you. Or that your private mistakes, like unfaithfulness, could hurt you professionally. Any woman in the USA can explain to you what it feels like to be alone in a big city. They cannot walk down the street at 3am alone without knowing there is real danger all around them. Is that freedom? To be gripped by fear because you walked home alone after a night out? If you ask a woman in Havana if she shares this fears it is alien to her. Unheard of. The idea that she might be assaulted walking around the city at night by herself is so rare that it simply does not even cross her mind. So is freedom based around what you can do as an individual, or is it liberation from being prevented from doing normal human activities, like simply existing somewhere late at night while you are a woman? Maybe there are other views of freedom. That's the catch, what freedom means to most Westerners is not what it means to other peoples around the world. We aren't wrong and they aren't either. The imperialist mind hasn't caught up to this yet.
I would also note that as the American public is currently discovering, there are far more children working in slaughter houses, factories etc than they thought. And this doesn't even include things like the troubled teen industry which runs work camps for teens who often haven't committed a crime or juvenile prison labour.
You also have the fact that several US States are currently passing or pushing bills to re-legalise children working in these dangerous places. So you have all of China pushing in anti-child labour direction and a significant proportion of the US pushing in a pro-child labour direction.
It's possible that it could be not that different from here, though. The US is an incredibly authoritarian state if you're black, for instance. And the state will take every change it gets to enforce its laws against you. If you commit financial crimes or wage theft, though, if you are prosecuted at all, it's with kid gloves.
It's entirely possible for a state to be inconsistent with its enforcement of the laws.
Entirely true, but that exposes the core of what I was getting at: China's contradictions and problems are really not that unlike us. They are painted as otherworldly authoritarian monsters; a system entirely separate and alien to ours. Yet, if you accept what you just said, you must reluctantly admit that they are not so different after all. If you can admit that they are like us in many ways then it starts to really become obvious to you when they are painted as so different. The veil of Western propaganda lifts slowly.
This is not to say the US is the same as China or whatever. Just that they are not as different as the imperialists say.
This video popped in my feed and it made me think of this conversation:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3vhzDS9Xpno
I'm busy, but if someone doesn't write one in the meantime I might write a little about Tiananmen later.
TLDR the west has been telling big lies about China for decades. There was no massacre in the square. Wikileaks released diplomatic cables admitting this. Western reporters who were there have admitted this. Liu Xiaobo, one of the organizers of the protests, admitted this. There is footage on youtube of the crowd peacefully evacuating the square at the end of the night (fucking impossible to search on youtube, I'll have to dig through my favorites later). A Spanish film crew was present in the square all night. Reporters who described seeing shooting in the square from their hotel rooms were later shown to be staying in rooms with no view of the square.
CIA and NED buildup in Beijing prior to the event were widely acknowledged. Protest signs were suddenly in English. People suddenly had gasoline, a smattering of people suddenly had guns. Western intelligence has exploited its near-total control over foreign reporting on China to construct an almost entirely fictional narrative about the events at Tiananmen, and then amplify that narrative through dozens of media outlets until it took on a self-reinforcing life of its own in the public consciousness.
Here is another detailed debunking of the Western public view of what happened
https://www.liberationnews.org/tiananmen-the-massacre-that-wasnt/
Thanks! I recognize the URL and article title, this is one of the articles I would have been digging around for.
So, a friend of mine has been to China. We don't talk politics much, but they said they know people who know people that died in Tianemenn.
Next time it comes up, should I say "lol no you dont?"
iirc ~200ish people died in violent clashes with police in various other locations around the city. Very different from the image of police mowing down peaceful protesters in Tiananmen.
Also worth noting that police were frightened after transport vehicles had been stopped and set on fire earlier, with unarmed police burned alive and their corpses strung from nooses in public. There are googleable photos online if you feel like seeing that. Articles I've read speculated that the protesters who did this might have been western agitators, since they were described as older and not looking like students. I'm remembering this from an article I read a few months ago. I can try to dig it up later, it might have been the one on redsails but idk.
students: in the square, proponents of bourgeois democracy, politically organized, bourgeois demographics, didn't get massacred
workers: outside the square, against inflation brought about by economic liberalization, politically disorganized, proletarian demographics, massacred due to agent provocateurs a la 2014 maidan
I'm happy to expand with context and Cool China Facts, but you're actually asking the wrong question and that's the most important issue.
Implicit in your question is a simple idea: is China Good or is China Bad? And further: if you were to rack up Good Things in China and compare them to Baf Things in China, would it end up with China Good or China Bad?
This is a liberal approach to understanding states, nations, the people within them, and the factions among them, and usually conflates all four: is the entire country, as if it were a person with agency, good or bad?
The reality will actually be that all of these categories have different facets and interactions. As an entire country in the real world, there will be good things and bad things and nuanced things and things that are bad but not as bad as elsewhere and things that are good but not as goof as elsewhete. And, most importantly, how is it positioned within the global geopolitical context, what is its trajectory, and what influence does it have on other nations and the overall system of capitalism. Because if you look at it that way, you will find that the forces opposed to China have been dominant white supremacist colonizers responsible for historical and ongoing monstrosities far beyond what a China Watcher will exaggerate and simplify and get racist about, and that China is offering a path to multipolarization that will and does shield other countries from the horrors of American (capital) hegemony.
So, this is all a preview to say that you should expect these things:
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Bad Things can happen in China. It's a country of over a billion people grappling with its own challenges and development. It's a country with peoplr and history, not a fantasy world of exactly how some Westerner thinks everything should be.
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Don't forget that a lot of those Bad Things are mostly propaganda.
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Don't forget to contextualize the bad things in relation to what other actors are doing. A common propaganda tactic in the US, the most propagandized country, is to criticize and sanction other countries doing far milder versions of horrors repeatedly carried out by US Empire. The US killed off millions of Iraqis through sanctions and the deliberate destruction of civilian infrastructure and a Yemeni child dies from deprivation every minute due to the US-driven Saudi campaign. Keep that in mind when you hear Western critiques of their enemy's alleged islamophobia.
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Don't forget your own context. What purpose does being vocally negative about China serve? Thay is the actual intent of the propaganda. You're not going to make China better by getting a bunch of Westerners to hate it. You're going to help manufacture consent for sanctions and war, both of which are actually intended to maintain US hegemony at the expense of common people that you woulf supposedly being sympathizing with. It's fine to develop internal critiques, buy if you aren't aware of the propaganda or your audience, you will simply reinforce the violent xenophobic status quo.
As an example of the propaganda, every single example you mentioned is tied up in a military-state-industrial complex of propaganda sources, which you might not be aware of, and beyond that, are all fed to us through a lens of maximization of sinophobic angles and false attributions inherent to our media system. For example, most things that you "know" about the treatment of Uyghurs, if you follow Western sources, are curated by one homophobic, antisemitic weirdo that can't read or speak Chinese (Zenz) and some CIA cutout cutouts (two layers) of weird nationalists who in no way represent common opinions among Uyghur people, but are propped up by US State Department funding. So you must contend with the reality that your information here, that you used to form strong opinions, is probably garbage, and you will have to start from scratch with a media critical lens.
And what you should discover is that China's approach to extremism in Xinjiang is indeed heavy-handed and has negative aspects to it. It is also a reaction to increasing Wahhabist extremism and terrorism in the region where hundreds were being killed. Wahhabism is not traditional, in any way, to Uyghur culture, which is a unique turkic culture with a relation to islam and cultural practices that is very different from Western stereotypes. You'll also find that the destabilization of Afghanistan and weaponization of Wahhabists against China, in Xinjiang, has been on the US' radar for over a decade. The Chinese national-level government's response to this was to (1) directly combat non-traditional Wahhabist practices that oppress women and promote terrorism, and (2) promote economic development to support increasing urbanization and generally improve quality of life, as people with prospects are less radicalizable. This did mean, for example, compulsory attendance of courses to improve folks' understanding of Chinese, to develop practical skills, to get placed into jobs and industries where they can gain experience and bring that back to their own communities. There was monitoring of activities and behaviors for Wahhabist activity. There were some officials (remember, we are talking about real people) who engaged in abuse. There were indeed bad things, mixed in with a program that successfully reformed ascendant non-traditional violent and oppressive forces and improved the economic standing of the targeted group. And remember, both Uyghur and Mandarin are taught, not just one or the other.
Now consider the wider context. How have Western countries responded to (and promoted) Wahhabism? And, distinctly, how have they treated muslim people? We could spend all day discussing this, but consider that the response to a single terrorist attack was two wars of aggression where millions were killed or exiled (the people to be "liberated"), widespread islamophobia targeted at all brown people, a global system of sanctions and surveillance. Incomparable. The systematic destruction of peoples and cultures. And the weaponization of the reactions to those "interventions": Wahhabism itself, and related extremist islam-adjascent movements, are fostered by US proxies and used to destroy populations and designated enemies. ISIS emerged and thrived with US consent and was used against Syria and Kurdish breakaways. These situations were used for global recruitment, to provide real combat experience for extremists to take home for their own protects. This very much did happen re: Uyghurs in Xinjiang, there were active recruitment efforts to merge turkic and Wahhabist views to export folks to train in war against Syria and Kurdish breakaways, then return and carry out terrorist attacks to promote the creation of "East Turkestan", an invention of this group pf extremists with basically zero grounding in traditional Uyghur culture. These are the groups that carried out terrorist attacks in Xinjiang, these are the groups fostered by off-the-books US activities, these are the groups China responded to: a deliberate and funded attempt to break off an entire province of the country through the misery of its population and at odds with the vast majority of the people's positions and interests. Wings of these extremist groups were on the US' official lists of terrorist groups, only taken off so that they could be funded by the NED to push propaganda at Westerners.
And so we get to the intended impact of the Western response and propaganda. What have they pushed through, these people who "care" about Uyghurs?
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Sanctions targeting the development of civilian industry in Xinjiang. Agricultural and textile products, mostly. If successful, these would impoverish Uyghur people, not help them, and the propagandists are well aware of this. Victims of the propaganda are just their useful idiots who think they are helping human rights despite, in effect, contributing to a plan to make the targeted population miserable. Lies about slavery are projected onto "picking cotton", which the US actually did use chattel slavery to do, whereas Xinjiang is largely mechanized.
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Turning sentiment against China within the West. China is a competitor. US hegemony needs your consent to undermine China and these are planks in its platform.
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Promoting the aforementioned Wahhabist and related violent and oppressive groups, again with your manufactured consent. You have probably believed several lines that came directly from those odd ethnonationalist-with-transplanted-ideas groups funded by the NED. They are part of the same complex that killed a bunch of Uyghurs.
So, in summary:
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Reconfigure the scope of your view towards an entire country, as the simplistic narratives you've been told are sinophobic, orientalist, anticommunist propaganda that work primarily by telling you how to frame the question rather than informing you.
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Do media criticism if you want to have any chance of an accurate view of "enemies" designated by the West.
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Remember your own role in not contributing to manufacturing consent for war and deprivation, especially against the people you're supposedly sympathetic to. The situation in Ukraine has a corrolary here, where the West has been pushing hard to create the conditions of war for decades and is currently telling you to support a prolonged war effort at Ukrainians' expense, but characterizing it as support for Ukraine. It is very easy to do the exact opposite or your intent if you don't consider your position and audience.
There were some officials (remember, we are talking about real people) who engaged in abuse.
This is such an important part here and something that I think we often forget when criticizing countries. Individual accounts of abuse are bad, and certainly a flaw in the system that they are allowed to occur in the way they do but there's a large difference between systemic failure vs systemic empowerment.
I have absolutely no doubt that some of the Real People dealing in Xianjang were abusive in some shape and form. That's how people just are, there's always power hungry abusive assholes seeking roles of power and even the best attempts to weed them out perfectly is going to find that an impossible battle. You're always going to have to be some level of reactive with abuse of power because plenty of them are quite skilled at hiding themselves.
The question of Xianjang is not "Did any abuse at all occur?" but if it (particulary the more standout examples) was systemic and intentional at the higher levels. This question seems very largely to be a resounding no, but I would have no doubt believing that a few lower level officials certainly did some awful things.
Honestly even people here often fall for the same thinking, I remember feeling the same way about the border sterilization case. Was if a horrible thing? Yeah, but it doesn't seem to be drastically systemic as border policy. Was it a failure that it occured at all? Yeah to some degree, but no system can be perfect when the broken cogs disguise themselves.
And also of course you have to keep in mind that in any country on the planet, minds do differ. The degrees on which they differ and how often change based off cultures, but you and I wouldn't exist here to begin with if that wasn't true. There are lots of pro LGBT movements and party members too, and like the rest of the world this seems to be divided pretty heavily along age. And really, China as a whole isn't behind most of the rest of Asia.
Most of the criticisms made towards China on LGBT rights can be rightfully made towards Japan as well, and yet (many) pro LGBT westerners still seem capable of understanding that there are progressive Japanese movements and organizations too.
Yes, absolutely. And we should also remember that China, as a whole country, has highly sophisticated debates and decision-makers with power, so not only are these decisions where abuse could and did occur, but every policy is implemented knowing that there ia not full controp or safeguards, that they are working with the resources they have and are making difficult decisions that rely on the overall structures and material forces they have curated for decades.
It is not human nature to abuse, but we also do not have the conditions in which we don't create abuses or situations where abuse can occur. That is a goal we can all aspire to relative to our own communities and the power structures we foster or undermine or destroy. And it's one where we should have open minds on alternative paths and mechanisms of control, as we are often limited by the guardrails of the liberal carceral state, white supremacy, and settler logic. China's approach to Xinjiang shows one particular strategy, one that we do not regularly see in the West, and with its own cultural embeddings, advantages, and disadvantages. We tend to just kill and imprison and depower targets, marginalize them and propagandize until the populace thinks they deserve it. Leaving plenty of room for criticism and hope for better alternatives in the future, the approach in China is so much less harmful and measured, my main takeaway is, "thank fuck they didn't have the American approach".
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Most millennials who grew up during the early aughts who remember 9/11 also remember the country's moment when it sank into anger, fury, and :frothingfash: over the attacks.
It was a response of anger and glee in that American purpose had been reignited from the aimlessness of a post-Cold War decade. And following that logic, the country descended into an orgy of jingoism, intensified racism, violence and death. The US wanted blood. The rest of the decade was a license by the public for the government to engage in its crimes of retribution.
Established media like the New York Times helped to engineer a justification for the invasion of Iraq, and there was very little pushback on this that it revealed to its audience upon retrospective reflection that the media had become - or always was - a mouthpiece for the government. Later some realized it was a mouthpiece of capital, the anima that compelled the state to act the way it does. But the acceptance and consumption of media as propaganda isn't an act of deception but a ritual for legitimacy that the government and the people are mutual partners in; a collective act of self-delusion to perpetuate the system of exploitation and oppression against political rivals domestic and foreign.
What I mean by this is that the US builds legitimacy for action, sanction, and intervention - as it has throughout its history - through proxies in the media, other nations, through defectors in antagonistic nations (using people as props; e.g: North Korean defectors, Cuban exiles, et cetera.) and institutions. To attack an enemy, one must first dehumanize them. Why does the US do these things? To dominate the world. But to dominate the world is a means to an end, and that end is to ensure the cheap supply of goods and labor to the core nations and ensure easy access to credit and debt to sustain the consumption of those goods & services. This is all in service of profit.
u/BowlingForDeez makes a good post here about why the US has suddenly become so antagonistic towards the PRC.
It's important to note that when it comes to LGBT issues, China is getting better.
How is America progressing on that front?
TBF gender dysphoria is recognized as a mental illness so it'd be easier to open up clinics for that vs. something else.
There is still a lot of media censorship of LGBTQ - e.g the 2016 ban on gay characters in movies/TV shows, which is a pretty big issue.
Ban on gay characters in movies and tv shows? Are you telling me that those guys in my BL dramas are just friends?
Yeah, China is behind America on gay rights. They also don't have a mass movement of evangelical Christians trying to eliminate gay and transgender people. Boomer brain worms seem like a much easier obstacle.
like somebody else said the last time a gay and feminine men ban was floated by some dumbass middle manager in the chinese party: 'if genshin impact still exists tomorrow, i'll consider this fake news'
OP absolutely thank you for this post. So many people would simply see a group of people who broadly disagree with them on a topic and dig in their heels. You asked for more and clearer information and are even open to the possibility that you may be affected by propaganda. This is how good leftists, and good people, start.
If you're reading this and you posted a negative comment, consider deleting or amending it, this guy is a comrade fr
1. Child Labor
Not only is child labor illegal in China, but China's labor regulations are extremely progressive compared to the West, and the West is what I'd assume most would claim the "baseline" of what adequate labor regulations are [despite them of course not being adequate]; nearly all jobs have trade unions which are under the one CPC trade union [which meets twice every year and targets problems in every single union], most jobs have 30 minutes to an hour in addition to lunch to sleep [also happens in schools as well], jobs can't extend beyond 8.5 hours a day [with most jobs being between 7.5 hours to 8 hours, and to show this isn't arbitrary, my last job was 9.5 hours a day]. Days off are required under law to be provided for laborers on New Year’s, Spring Festival, International Labor Day (May Day), National Day, and so on. In regards to "high labor exploitation", I'm not sure what you're referring to by this, but China's annual national income rises by 16% every year [largest in the world, so is the 400% annual income rise since the 1980s], all pensions are nationalized, China has the lowest retirement age in the world, workplace safety standards are higher than all Capitalist countries, and more. Where did this narrative arise? Likely from the period during the 1980s to very early 2000s where heavy industrialization occurred, and the introduction of the foreign bourgeoisie began to properly occur, so the famous "sweatshops" [which lasted for an extremely short period, but did exist, and thus you have those Apple suicide net pictures and such] and things arose. Most people have nary a clue on China, and still believe they're something like this, thus coming to the conclusion that they're some dystopian labor farm. I'd also assume that, China challenging the West, while differently from the West being an exporting country, means that people fall under the belief that they're completely squeezing labor to the greatest degree in order to maximize profits.
2. Internet/Media Censorship
During the July 5th, 2009 terror attacks in Urumqi (the capital of the Xinjiang Autonomous Region in China), 197 people were killed and ~1700 were wounded. Facebook, Twitter, and Google refused to crack down on misinformation relating to the attacks which could contribute to further violence, and declined to give information relating to the attacks which had been communicated through such services. This prompted the central government to set up a (near-net) ban regarding most areas of mainland China of regular access to these websites via internet blocks. There are two things to note: firstly, it is not illegal to access these websites in China, and license revocations can be circumvented with VPNs which are also not illegal. Secondly, this ban had a dual approach: both to get rid of misinformation contributing to further deaths and to revoke the right of these corporations to profit from their use by Chinese citizens unimpeded (after they had demonstrated that they had no interest in the safety of such people).
To quote Lenin, “All over the world, wherever there are capitalists, freedom of the press means freedom to buy up newspapers, to buy writers, to bribe, buy and fake ‘public opinion’ for the benefit of the bourgeoisie. This is a fact. No one will ever be able to refute it… The bourgeoisie (all over the world) is still very much stronger than we are. To place in its hands yet another weapon like freedom of political organization (= freedom of the press, for the press is the core and foundation of political organization) means facilitating the enemy’s task, means helping the class enemy. We have no wish to commit suicide, and therefore, we will not do this. We clearly see this fact: ‘freedom of the press’ means in practice that the international bourgeoisie will immediately buy up hundreds and thousands of Cadet, SocialistRevolutionary and Menshevik writers, and will organize their propaganda and fight against us. That is a fact. ‘They’ are richer than we are and will buy a ‘force’ ten times larger than we have, to fight us. No, we will not do it; we will not help the international bourgeoisie. How could you descend from a class appraisal-from the appraisal of the relations between all classes-to the sentimental, philistine appraisal? This is a mystery to me… Freedom of the press will help the force of the world bourgeoisie. That is a fact, ‘Freedom of the press’ will not help to purge the Communist Party in Russia of a number of its weaknesses… because this is not what the world bourgeoisie wants. But freedom of the press will be a weapon in the hands of this world bourgeoisie.”
Lenin, Vladimir Ilyich. V. I. Lenin: Collected Works, vol. 32, Progress Publishers, 1965.
3. Anti-LGBTQ
We must not look at historical development in a uniform manner; China emerged from feudalism only 70 years ago. I would like to see gay marriage legalized in China as well, but there are other LGBTQ developments that are promising (sources from state media):
China's first clinic for transgender children and adolescents set up in Shanghai (Global Times)
Mutual Guardianship (Sixth Tone)
And CGTN has produced a couple of LGBTQ documentaries you can find online
4. Uyghur Genocide
I have a post on this bookmarked in the Sino comm, but I'll quickly add some resources below
Xinjiang: A Report and Resource Compilation
Xinjiang Responds (video and written responses from people in Xinjiang)
State Department Lawyers Concluded Insufficient Evidence to Prove Genocide in China
Estimations of 1 million detainees (and onwards):
- 2018 UN Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination report authored by the NGO (Network of) Chinese Human Rights Defenders [which has received NED funding]
The report (which concludes 1.3-2 million detainees) was based on interviews with only 8 Uyghur individuals, then extrapolated to form percent estimates on the population of detainees in the XUAR
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2015 IRS filing forms show that $819,553 (out of $820,023) of the organization’s funds came from government grants
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2016 IRS filing forms: $859,091 (out of $1,284,893)
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2017 IRS filing forms: $497,684 (out of $898,256)
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2019 IRS filing forms: $757,884 (out of $760, 803)
- Adrian Zenz, member of the Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation
Adrian Zenz’s deliberate fabrications regarding sterilization statistics [“new IUD”]
[On “net IUD” (~80% as misleading figure)]
Xinjiang Police Files (XPF) Debunk
5. Relations with the RF
China does not have pro-war relations with Russia, that would mean uniting with them in invading Ukraine which has not happened (China has lobbied for "peace" which you may see as one-sided). Xi and Putin are in good relations because of similar immediate aims and because of Russia's progressive foreign impact mirroring the Ottoman Empire (see Marx's comments on the latter). Russia is not a "good" country, they are not socialist, but strategic allyship should not immediately be thrown out because of this.